1. Field
This disclosure is generally related to distribution of digital content. More specifically, this disclosure is related to delegating the signing of content from devices with limited resources to computationally powerful devices based on manifests and message authentication codes.
2. Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and e-commerce continues to create a vast amount of digital content. Content-centric network (CCN) architectures have been designed to facilitate accessing and processing such digital content. A CCN includes entities, or devices, such as network clients, forwarders (e.g., routers), and content producers, which communicate with each other by sending interest packets for various content items and receiving content object packets in return. CCN interests and content objects can be identified by their unique names, which are typically hierarchically structured variable length identifiers (HSVLI). An HSVLI can include contiguous name components ordered from a most general level to a most specific level. Each CCN content object can be cryptographically signed by its producer or publisher, e.g., by creating an electronic signature based on asymmetric or public key cryptography. A requesting client can verify the digital signature of received content to ensure integrity, original authentication, and correctness. However, producing a digital signature can be computationally expensive. Some devices (e.g., Internet of Things (IoT) or sensor network applications) may lack the resources to produce a digital signature due to limited memory, computation power, or energy supply.